Making your own cider vinegar by reusing the mother

A while back, I made cider vinegar. My vinegar is now running out, so I’m going to try using my mother to convert apple juice into cider vinegar. I was reading mossgrownstone’s re-use of mother, and feel encouraged by her results.

I also got a message that read:

I came across you blog while trying to find an answer to my homemade vinegar question. It was an old post so I hope your vinegar turned out and is all done vinegaring 🙂

Mine is at the six week post apple strain and looks great, smells great, and tastes like Bragg’s tho a bit weaker. My question is, I have a lot of the while floaties (sinkies?) at the bottom of the jar -maybe a quarter inch deep in a 2 gallon glass crock- but it hasn’t developed the spongie disk that forms at the top that is described in a lot of directions. Did your develop the spongie disk? If not, did it still turn out fine?

I thought I would answer here in case others were wondering.

First of all, having homemade vinegar feels great. When I use it, I don’t have moral issues with the source, harvest, and the food/grocery industry. That is freedom.

Second, if you look at Mossy_stone’s vinegar post, you’ll see that the mother could take different forms. Like I said after a couple of weeks, even without a mother, it seemed like I had vinegar. So my advice to Lisa would be expect the traditional disk later. I did get the spongy disk and it grew thicker over time, but when I look at your quantity — 2 gallons — I wonder if more time would be required to develop the environment for a mother. I haven’t attempted a large quantity, and most likely will stay small because of storage space and usage. I’ll post here about reusing mother with apple juice when the time comes.